Presented with the dilemma of having to watch two things simultaneously this evening, I chose to watch the Yankee game while keeping the debate in a picture-in-picture box. On inning breaks, or at times when it seemed as if something interesting was happening in the debate, I'd switch over and listen to the proceedings for a while, and then go back to the game before too long. (The Yankees won, going ahead of the Twins 2 games to 1 in the ALDS. The Red Sox swept their series, moving ahead, and opening the significant possibility of a Yankee/Red Sox ALCS.)

But in fact, any insights I might have about the debate came not so much during the times I was tuned into it, but when I had the game on, with the debate silent in the swap box. At those times it was easy to read the body language of both candidates, and the distinction was significant.

Bush was tense, angry, uptight and disdainful of the audience. He pushed his head forward of his body and shook it up and down repeatedly, used his hands to gesture with short, sharp jabs, and held the audience off with his tense posture. He yelled, and scolded, and confronted, and when sitting down, he tried so hard not to scowl that he ended up looking artificially pleasant (when he wasn't twinkling at someone in the audience or blinking rapidly).

Kerry, on the other hand, seemed relaxed and calm, with no much tension in his body and no real anger to be seen. What was interesting was that when I did swap over to the debate, Kerry's speaking didn't quite come to the level of comfort seen in his body language. He stumbled over his words a little, corrected himself a number of time, and groped for how to express things.

There wasn't any such disparity with Bush: his physical demeanor -- angry and closed off -- was perfectly mirrored in his words (at least those which I heard). His physicality was so striking that it provoked me on a number of occasions into swapping over to see just what Bush was so riled up about, and when I did it was pretty amazing! Lecturing the audience, yelling at the moderator, clucking about credibility.

At one point, early on, I thought "He's just lost the election, right there," but in fact he got better later on -- although he never lost the tension and never looked in the least presidential. Early indications are that the pundits are falling for the soft bigotry of lowered expectations and awarding Bush copious points just for being better than the previous debate, but on any absolute scale (that is, one not artificially lowered by massive media spinning), Bush did very, very, poorly, no matter that he got a little more control of himself late in the debate.

There really was only one guy on the floor who looked presidential, and he doesn't currently make his home in the White House (although it seems more and more probable that he will in only a few months).

...the schoolyard swagger, the left arm cocked like an itchy gunslinger's, the arrogant sneer, the roosterish strutting -- and the voice. God, that voice. You don't quite call that screaming. It wasn't exactly caterwauling. Maybe yowling. Whatever it was, he sounded like a tedious and noisome braggart in the parking lot after a football game.

At one point I found myself thinking of him as a "cocky bantam," so I guess "roosterish" works for me too.

If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.

If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.

(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)

Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.